Specifically, the offering is delivered, sold and supported by VMware as an on-demand, elastically-scalable cloud service, designed to remove the barriers to cloud migration and cloud portability.

From a partner standpoint, customers can consume this service hourly and pay only for each hour that a host is active in their account, with one-year and three-year subscription options set to become available.

VMware Australia director of cloud services, Dan McLean, said partners can use the services deployed in the US and the UK, and have the same experience in Australia.

At the time of the Australian launch, there will be more features and capabilities added to the platform, which will also entail multi-currency pricing, allowing partners and customers to transact in Australian dollars. Partners can also get involved in trialling the platform.

“We’re looking for eager partners to get involved ahead of our Australian launch,” he said. “We can get them involved in the platforms ahead of time, and when we get to launch, we’ve got partners with the right skills sets and go-to-market strategy."

McLean discussed the opportunities this presents to its partner network, saying that previously partners would have disjointed conversations with their customers around how to modernise their data centre or talk about a public cloud strategy.

But with VMware Cloud on AWS, partners can take a comprehensive cloud offering to the market and build their business to line up with their own strategy.

“They were two disjointed conversations, and often meant they had different capability and domain experts inside their business, if they wanted to try to do both," McLean said. "So they built up two siloed organisations to try to tackle this market opportunity and service the customer.

“The challenge then for customers was they were having two conversations with their partner or multiple partners, just try to achieve their digital transformation outcome.

“Now they can bring those capabilities together and talk to their customers around the entire landscape of their applications and bring those different domains together within the partner’s organisation, so they’re having a cohesive discussion with their customer rather than being about a private or public cloud, but simply enable a multi-cloud, hybrid cloud strategy for their business.”

VMware Australia head of channel and general business, Kerrie-Anne Turner, said a cloud certification track for partners will be available in A/NZ in a few weeks, along with training and enablement across both technical and sales.

Turner added that the opportunity with VMware and AWS, further opens the ability to build services that aren’t traditional implementation and consulting services.

“The offering we’re bringing to the market, allows the partner ecosystem to create a suite of services that they wouldn’t have thought of doing with VMware previously - such as migration services for example," Turner added. "Therefore we get to expand businesses with our partners and have different conversations.

"We have an ability to help partners transform their businesses, not only from a customer perspective, but economically as well. VMware has the technology, models and partnership with AWS to help our partners transform.”

VMware’s partner network is made up of services providers, solutions providers; system integrators/outsource channels and a community of influencers such as Deloitte, who talk about influencing customer strategies. Turner said.

“Our partner ecosystem is changing rapidly and customers are asking for partners with deep specialisation in particular technologies that can be delivered at speed, so this changes the way we think about partnering,” Turner said.

In other news, VMware and Singtel have signed a memorandum of understanding, jointly setting up their first Digital Transformation Foundry that will be based in Singapore. Similar foundries are also slated for Australia and Hong Kong.

It is designed as a ‘virtual sandbox’ for customers to conduct proof-of-concept experiments and will initially focus on delivering a suite of four cloud services to enable customers to modernise their data centres, integrate public and private clouds, transform information security and create a digital work space of the future.

Slideshows

ARN Exchange: Channel discusses security spending priorities

Customers spending priorities, drawing up a security strategy for customers and partners, detailing how partners can increase profit through security and outlining key areas of market growth ahead were some of the topics discussed at the ARN Exchange event in Sydney. Partners got together to talk about the spending priorities of customers within the security market today and the skills required from partners to deliver those services. The event was in association with Juniper Networks, Webroot, Cloud Plus and Mimecast. Photos by Christine Wong.

What are the spending priorities of customers within the security market today and what are the skills required from partners to deliver those services? An overview of the security market in Australia was debated in the ARN Exchange event in Melbourne with discussions covering the customers spending priorities, drawing up a security strategy for customers and partners, detailing how partners can increase profit through security and outlining key areas of market growth ahead. The event was in association with Juniper Networks, Webroot, Cloud Plus and Mimecast. Photos by Raymond Korn.

The channel came together for the forth running of the ARN Emerging Leaders Forum in Australia, created to provide a program that identifies, educates and showcases the upcoming talent of the ICT industry.
Hosted as a half day forum, attendees heard from industry specialists as keynoters and panellists discussed leadership paths and career choices. Hall of Fame members and industry mentors​ hosted small groups of future leaders to mentor and advise.
This also marked ARN's inaugural 30 Under 30 Tech Awards, which recognised young talent in the Australian IT industry across technical, sales, marketing, management, human resources and entrepreneur categories.
Photos by Christine Wong.

Copyright 2019 IDG Communications. ABN 14 001 592 650. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of IDG Communications is prohibited.